The present invention relates generally to a solution for transmission of signals to a plurality of subscriber receivers. More particularly the invention relates to a system according to claim 1 and a client computer according to the preamble of claim 13. The invention also relates to a computer program according to claim 22 and a computer readable medium according to claim 23.
Advertising plays an important role in the transmission of broad- or multicast signals, such as TV-signals and streaming transmissions over the Internet. In the near future, it is expected to become increasingly important to improve the relevance of the advertising messages and provide an attractive pricing for the advertisers, particularly for smaller and/or local companies. Therefore, it is essential that an adequate targeting of the transmitted commercial information be accomplished, at least as a complement to the existing transmission resources for broadcast signals. It is also important that the broadcasters are offered a cost efficient solution.
The international patent application WO02/098132 of the present applicant describes a solution for controlling the decoding of mass distributed coded signals, such as digital satellite channels, with a high precision to a large number of subscriber receivers.
U.S. patent application publication 2002/0087976 describes a system for delivering broadcast-quality video with targeted advertising to viewers over the switched communication network. For example, program streams with appropriately inserted splice points may be transmitted from a network head end node to one or more egress nodes via the switched network. Demographically targeted advertising is then inserted into the program streams at the egress nodes for subsequent delivery to individual subscribers.
A solution for providing demographically targeted TV-commercials is also disclosed in the European patent application No. 424 648, A2. An advertising management system for digital video streams, which allows ads to be matched to groups of subscribers, is described in the international patent application WO00/64165. The U.S. Pat. No. 4,602,279 describes a solution for providing a targeted profile in interactive TV-distribution network.
Furthermore, various software solutions including graphical user interfaces are also known for editing individual video files. For example, the international patent application WO99/52115 describes a solution for non-linear video editing which facilitates the editing of separate fields in a particular frame of a video clip.
Hence, the prior art includes various examples of solutions, both for targeting signal transmissions to selected groups of receivers, and for editing video signals via a graphical user interface. However, there is yet no solution which allows one or more remote clients to organize their particular fraction of a larger amount of transmissions that are administered via a central management node.